


FIVE TIMES KISSED

by explodeabeau



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 18:08:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17986091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodeabeau/pseuds/explodeabeau
Summary: They don’t really get along, but paradoxically they get along just fine. Or maybe not, but they're still close enough to hurt each other.





	FIVE TIMES KISSED

**_I._ **

           They don’t really get along, but paradoxically they get along just fine. If he’d wanted to get all fancy talking about it, he would have said they were foils to one another - but it wasn’t like anybody ever asked the bayou boy to get fancy when he talked, so he doesn’t.

Logan is iron, pure and simple. Battered and worn, sure, but he is no less hard for it; he is sturdy, insurmountable, a fixture of the land. Logan picks himself up after every fight, because at a certain point that’s all a man knows how to do - he  _endures._ He keeps moving, flypaper-stuck in time, towards some distant goal. He’s a fixture, the man who’s never allowed to break, the weapon others can only aspire to be though he’d never asked for that. (None of them had, but Remy thinks Logan got one of the worst bargains.) Another battle won. Well done, well _done._ He goes on. He wins. He doesn’t have to pretend to be happy about it.

It hurts. It’s survivable.

Remy is smoke, the put-together dreams of a thousand and more men and women he’s never met, crushed into the mold of le diable blanc and taught to be suave and silky-smooth because it’ll get him where he needs to go. There’s flashes of a child underneath it all, because, well - maybe it’s sad, maybe it isn’t, he doesn’t hold a grudge either way - he’s never had time to grow up or figure out who he is. He gets to dream and run after those vague goals ceaselessly, chasing  _what-if, what-if._  He simply exists, and he gets the job done, and maybe he takes too many gambles, but that’s alright too. He gets to play at being hero, gets to try and try and try again even though the world will never see him for anything other than what it wants him to be. He smiles anyway, because the devil is and always will be a gentleman.

It hurts. It’s survivable.

They don’t really get along, but they don’t cooperate any worse than with the rest of the team. It’s just that they don’t pretend that they’re the handy-dandy best of pals, and that’s okay. Remy kind of prefers it, if he’s honest, harmlessly pushing at Logan’s nerves to let him know that he does care for his teammate at least a little, and the weary  ~~acceptance~~  tolerance he gets in return.

They spar together, fight together, live together. It’s alright. Sometimes they drink together, too, kick their feet up in the rec room, and if Remy swipes Logan’s beer once or twice Logan pops his claws maybe one less time than that.

They deflect attention in the same way, with different connotations to their names; Logan uses the lingering cloud of bloody violence he can’t seem to shake. Remy plays the aimless libertine. It works, that’s all that matters.

They aren’t looking for redemption. Sure, it’s admirable, teaching these kids to take care of themselves, putting good out into the world. But that’s not why Remy does it, and he thinks maybe it’s the same for Logan. 

He just wants a little  _peace._

But Remy isn’t exactly the sort that knows how _not_  to cause trouble, so he does a little, and that’s okay too. He blows Logan kisses, flirty, meaningless as breathing to onlookers but in truth there’s affection behind them, respect because he just doesn’t  _bother_  with things like that unless he cares.

He blows Logan a kiss from across the kitchen. Logan catches it, slams it into the blender, and turns it on with a smirk.

He blows Logan a kiss when he catches him sneaking back into the mansion at oh-who-knows what hour, and he earns an exaggerated eye roll and a swat for his trouble.

He blows Logan a kiss when he tosses him a beer, and somehow that’s the only one that’s okay. Remy can’t help but laugh - he gets beaned square in the head when Logan chucks it back at him in disgust, but it’s not like anyone’s managed to shut him up yet.

**_II._ **

           Logan doesn’t ask a whole lot of questions, and he sure as shit doesn’t answer dumb ones. It’s one of the things Remy appreciates most about him, quite possibly the best quality he could have as far as the thief is concerned. Logan doesn’t ask.

He’s the only one who doesn’t.

So maybe it isn’t too surprising that when he makes his way back to the mansion with his coat swirling ’round his legs like it’s trying to drag him down, he makes his way to the back porch. It’s summer, hot but far dryer in New York than it was where he’d just come from. There’s a game of volleyball on, or something - at least, there’s a miniature sandstorm forming over that-a-ways. Probably Stormy disagreeing with a referee ruling.

A gloved hand settles on the rough wooden back of the rocking chair the Wolverine is settled in, and Remy’s voice when he forces it out is torn and hoarse. “Hey.”

Logan tips his head back to study him, eyes gleaming, and Remy stares back with devil red, tired and fucking  _pissed_  and defeated and maybe when the feral’s nostrils flare he figures out just how bad it is under the fog of smoke and too much alcohol, ’cause he’s standing without a word to follow Remy off to the Danger Room. He doesn’t bother trying to pretend, doesn’t say any of the stupid, congenial shit that never really matters at the best of times. They aren’t friends, they’re hardly coworkers, but they exist in the same space. It’s enough.

Remy needs to fight and make something bleed without doing lasting damage, drain the energy shaking through his bones and screaming for somewhere to go after too long held back. Logan gets it. 

(It makes Remy wonder how often he lets other people do this to him.) 

His heart aches, just a little, ’cause he kind of gets it too, even if it was a different voice that taught him why. _I like it when you let me hurt you, thief boy. It’s how I know you trust me. That you care ’bout me._

"I need to use these," he says once they’re inside and sealed off from the rest of the world, and for once he lets his coat slip from his shoulders to pool on the ground and shows Logan the knives across his body, flat-hilted and tucked away so neatly no one would ever know they’re there at all. Logan’s eyebrows twitch upwards just a bit, but he doesn’t say anything.  


_You still fight like an assassin, LeBeau._

The knives are too at home in his hands, like they’d never left when in reality it’s been nearly a decade, though he isn’t old by any means. He worries, just for a moment. He’s reminded quick enough that he doesn’t have to - it’s Logan. 

A breath, and he cuts loose enough that his whole body aches before he moves. His pulse doesn’t quicken - it runs for its goddamn _life,_  jacked up in an instant better than a shot in the crook of his arm, pure energy the most deadly fuel he can use.

(It’s alright if he shakes apart just a little. He doesn’t need to stay in one piece, really.)

_No place for you here, diable blanc. you better go._

Logan wrenches his left arm behind his back, quick and precise; the sound he makes isn’t a good one, but it isn’t a bad one, either. He collapses forward, bends down enough that his shoulder screams. His foot crunches direct into Logan’s jaw hard, slamming his head up and back. 

The grip on him loosens, and Remy tucks himself into a ball, rolls forward, and slams another knife down, buries it in the ground up to the hilt. Letting go, bit by bit, as much as he can. It ain’t easy.

Nine years, and he’s only just now letting go.

He drops into a slide and takes aim as he falls, lets five cards fly at once as he skids just out of reach. The impacts shake the whole room, far more explosive than he technically _should_  be allowing to happen in a spar, but he can’t really bring himself to care. 

_I will give you this, LeBeau - I've never doubted your love for my daughter._

Minutes slip by, heavy with hitched breaths and skinned knees and dirt smeared over sharp jaws, soft grunts as elbows and knuckles meet their mark; auburn strands drift loose, sliced away by claws skimming close. He’s not sure how long it takes before his back hits the ground, how long it is before Logan leans his weight on his chest to hold him there, _enough._  It’s enough. 

A low, familiar chuff of irritation, and Remy laughs, unsteady and chopped up from the pressure on his ribs, but it’s still a laugh - and then he’s crying the way he hasn’t let himself over her in nine  _goddamn_  years because at the end of the day he’d kept believing in love and happy endings like the dope he always had been. He’d wanted it, so badly, he wanted to fix things and make both Guilds happy, make _her_  happy, show her all the things he’d done to try for a life together.

“I'm filing for divorce,”he says, and he sounds lost even to himself - he hadn’t told them yet, any of them, he’s just been the flirty jackass that didn’t follow through and fucked things over in the most grandiose fashion ever time. Logan’s face creases in faint surprise and yeah, Remy’s not shocked to see it, but he’s too busy sobbing into the dirt with every one of Bella Donna’s knives buried like grave markers for the pieces of his shitty heart all around them to talk about it.  


Logan doesn’t ask, but he drags Remy up and cradles him to his chest like a child, rough thumbs running under eyes squeezed tight shut to sweep away the salt on his cheeks and a low rumble echoing uncertain but not unkind in his ears, _it’s gonna be alright, Cajun, hey - yer okay, I got you,_ and somehow that hurts worst of all because it’s pity, and reassurance, and _sympathy_  that he doesn’t know how to handle.

The barest press of lips to the top of his head, and he stifles the racking sobs in his palms,  _je suis désolé, désolé, désolé -_

They don’t talk about it. It’s easier to pretend they aren’t fucked up when they don’t.

**_III._ **

           No one knows what the fuck to do with him, after Antarctica. He’s skittish, guarded, even worse than he was already, and he’d been pretty bad. He doesn’t eat at all some days, and then he eats too much all at once until he nearly vomits. Rogue tries to hug him, and he scrambles backwards so fast he leaves a goddamn afterimage. Jean spooks him on accident; a wall gets blown out as a result. Cyke puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to be reassuring or some shit - Remy bites him till he bleeds before he even realizes who it is, and he curls up in shame about it right then and there and fucking  _cries,_ sorry,  _sorry._

Nobody knows how to handle that particular bucket of crap, so they don’t.

It’s easier to leave him alone. 

And it works, or at least it seems to after a week or two, which is really all Remy has to make sure of. He smiles real big, turns on the charm, and reeks of general jackass. He’s shallow and flirty and all things  _gambit,_  shoves their idea of whatever his quintessential Remy-ness is back into their faces, and after a month or three everybody forgets. 

(He doesn’t. It’s not like anyone fucking  _apologized_.)

Logan is the only one who watches him, sometimes, these long, considering looks. Remy doesn’t like it, but confronting him over it would be a lot worse than just tolerating it, so he doesn’t bother. That’s the easy thing, isn’t it?

Sure, he shivers when the air conditioning blows on him directly, but that’s just fine, isn’t it? He’s still playing the hand he’s dealt. He’s useful, and he’s heroic but not really, and there’s a weekly lecture about how he could be a  _better person_  like he’s ever gonna get there. He does the work they ask him to do anyway. 

He keeps moving, because if he stops, the ice will get him.

He manages to keep it up until first snowfall. Then it turns real bad, real fast, and he shuts the door to the boathouse like a coffin lid and tapes up heavy towels over the three windows to block out everything, cranks the heater up until he’s fucking sweating. 

The soft bite of the ice still creeps in at the edges. Inevitable. Inescapable.

It takes a week and four days for him to run out of food, even with how his metabolism runs, ’cause he’s always living ready for the world to end but the boathouse is small and so was his supply.

(Nobody thinks to check on him, because it’s Remy. Out of sight, out of mind.)

Things get really bad when he starts eyeing wire caps for plastic to chew on, because all of a sudden things are real familiar in a bad way, but the day he starts thinking he might cave there’s a knock at the door. 

He doesn’t really want to answer, but he does, because he’s still got to pretend.

Logan shoves a crate full of canned goods so hard into his chest that he stumbles back with eyes wide in surprise, arms wrapping around the wood automatically even as the air slams out of his lungs. 

He blinks.

Logan rolls his eyes.

Remy remembers, then, that someone  _else_ has lived in cold and ice, and someone didn’t try to ask about it or fix it for him. Logan knows a little something about being reduced to nothing but base instinct and misery - and that is enough for Remy to toe the door closed behind him and offer him the last beer he’s got stashed.  They visit a while, Remy chattering a lot about all the dumb shit he’s distracted himself with - so, a whole lot about Star Wars Logan probably never wanted to know. There’s blankets, and hot cocoa, and things aren’t so bad while someone else is there.

Logan keeps the ice at bay. Not even nature can compete with him, Remy thinks, and he feels a whole lot better with the reminder.

When he leaves, Remy presses quick kisses to a stubbly cheek, _thank you, thank you -_

He gets elbowed out of the way with a grumble, but Logan comes back two days later with another box and a twelve-pack, so Remy figures he didn’t mind so much.

**_IV._ **

           He goes to Japan with Logan for a mission, just the two of them, and the entire way there and through the duration of their stay, he thinks maybe he’s seeing underneath to something the man used to be. Japan is _Logan’s place,_  in much the same way New Orleans is _Remy’s place,_  a home by heart if not by birth. And sure, maybe it isn’t all peachy keen, but really - what is? 

He stays good, for him, throughout. Keeps his chin up, stays polite, enjoys the food and gets the work done. And maybe he flirts a little with the girls, but hey.

He’s best when he’s bad, after all.

But he fits in better than Logan expected, too - and maybe that’s part of being such an integral part of something  _massive,_  something that has roots in Japan too and beyond. He knows Logan ain’t stupid; Wolverine is sharp enough to notice locals brushing up close enough to Remy to press tribute into his hand, slide trinkets and candies into his pocket as presents and tithes. And there’s not a chance he misses the way Remy passes them back thank-yous in return. 

He might be a pariah of a messiah, but he has always been a kind prince to his people, and they have made their own customs of not-quite-welcome for him. 

Dark brows raise just a fraction the day a couple of kids pop out of fucking nowhere to latch onto Remy’s legs like he’s a damn walking hugpost or something, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He’s even generous enough not to laugh his ass off when Remy stoops to ask the girl and her younger brother their names in incredibly horribly-accented Japanese, and he doesn’t mock him for the way he slips them both candies and tucks money behind their ears before shooing them off so their crew leader doesn’t worry. 

It’s home for Logan, but there’s space for Remy too, at least for a while.

One week drags into two, two into three, and if Remy disappears some nights to take care of his business it doesn’t fuck too much with what they’re doing since it’s on hold anyway. He tones down how irritating he is, and Logan doesn’t have to fight the urge to throttle him  _every_  day. He eats like a starving moron everywhere they go, but it just makes the grandparents running food stalls and holes in the wall happy. It turns out Japan’s summers might not match Louisiana heat, but they’re damn hot all the same.

Logan catches him out in the early morning, standing in front of the open fridge in a thin shirt soaked through and streaked with grime and boxers riding low on scarred-up, bony hips; he looks like he’s been out wrestling street dogs, which isn’t really all that far from the truth. His head tips back, and he runs the chilled glass of a beer bottle over his throat, sweat pooling in the hollow of his collarbone.

He starts when he realizes Logan is leaning in the doorway, eyes tracing over him, but he doesn’t bother to explain why there’s a guilty grin creeping over his features. He shrugs and puts the bottle back in the fridge and starts pulling out eggs to make breakfast instead. Logan prowls his way in, taking his place at the table to wait. Remy cracks eggs with one hand, drops them sizzling into the skillet like it’s second nature because it is.

Maybe he presses warm lips to the nape of Logan’s neck when he passes behind him to snag a tomato,  _thanks for puttin’ up with me, Lo_ - 

And maybe, just maybe, he’s met with a soft hum of acknowledgment.

**_V._ **

           He’s a little drunk. That’s never a surprise. It’s just what he does, it’s who he is, raised up to belong in the dark corners of bars and casinos with a cocky smirk plastered on his face and eyes gleaming ruby-red promises in the shadows. He feels best where he was taught to lurk, so that’s where he goes when he’s in the worst shape. His heaven is in the back blocks, where no one judges too much when he sinks, and that’s okay.

There’s only a few people that stay up as late as he does. Logan is one of them, but Logan likes to walk the grounds, always watching out for everybody else while he maps out his territory because he’s damn good at that. Remy likes to slip away and come back without a trace. 

Some nights, like tonight, their paths intersect.

“Smells like ya drank the whole damn bar,” Logan says, gruff and accusatory and maybe a hint of  _worried_ underneath, and Remy smiles smooth and bourbon-slick back at him ’cause he isn’t far from wrong, not when he’s the sort of man who can drink a fifth of Johnny Walker and saunter away from the table with everybody else’s life savings stuffed in his pockets.

When he drinks like this, he makes lots of bad choices, but he isn’t wasted tonight even if his head is pounding in protest. Not that it stops the bad choices, apparently.  


"N'importe," he says, and crooks his fingers at Logan,  _c’mere, c’mon._ “Venez ici, cher?”  


Logan’s lip curls a bit in amusement, but he steps forward anyway to steady him, slipping an arm around his waist and taking some of his weight; but that’s not what Remy needs, not when his heart is heavy and tired of pretending it doesn’t care. 

Remy LeBeau has always been doomed to care, and that’s hardly going to change when someone deserves far more than they receive as is. 

“I like you,” he drawls, and Logan strangles a sharp laugh, eyes glinting yellow in the dark when he turns his head to the thief, sharp planes of his face etched out in shadow. “Yeah? That why you blew up the last beer yesterday?"  


Remy sighs, because _of course_  Logan can’t make things easy, and he twists around, scarred fingers skating up a hard jaw and noses barely bumping together; breath heavy with whiskey and blue curaçao, he kisses him in earnest, slanting a too-warm mouth over surprisingly soft lips and coaxing him to respond, oh please  _please,_  heartbeat pulsing low in his ears.  


“I like you,”he says again, licks it into Logan’s mouth like he’s giving him a precious little secret because really he is. He doesn’t bother _justifying_  it - there’s a hundred reasons and none at all, because that’s just how this shit works, and he’s not the one writing the book or he’d have gotten over it a damn long time ago.“I _really_  - ” A lingering bite to Logan’s lower lip, a soft exhale a lot like giving up. “Mean that.”  


He breaks it all open, lets the feelings push up against Logan, a whole lot of heartache and want; lust tempered with respect; the way he thinks missions go better with Logan there;  _trust,_  a thief’s most treasured commodity; the genuine pleasure he has when they’re draped over the couch and Logan lets him prop his legs up in his lap and swipe his beer for a sip; all of the things that had built up one by one over the years when Remy wasn’t looking until he couldn’t possibly look away anymore.

It hadn’t been like he expected a whole lot, at least. Logan’s looking at him kind of like he just doesn’t know what to say or do when he pulls away, and that’s fair too. Remy ain’t mad. He waits, thumb drifting over stubble, but Logan is frozen there with kiss-parted lips - _unsure._

Well, his chances hadn’t been great.

He cracks a little bit inside, but that’s okay. He’s used to it. He figures Logan is, too. 

So he picks up the pieces of his head and flashes Logan a brilliant smile, already turning to walk away steady as anything, hand raised in a lazy-ass wave because he can still fake it. He’s real good at that, closing off his heart and mind, playing the role. 

They’re both real good at that.

“Sorry, Wolverine,”he calls, voice measured, even. Thieves are good liars - one of the first rules ever made, isn’t it? “I think m'drunk.”  


He doesn’t turn around. If Logan can smell the salt on his cheeks, he doesn’t want to know.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr @cardshcrp as a gift for @gutrage!


End file.
